Andrea Wishom joins a Pinterest board with two other female directors and six male directors and is the board’s only Black director.
Photo: Erika DufourPinterest Inc. PINS 2.47% appointed veteran media executive Andrea Wishom as a director, adding a Black woman to its board, as the image-sharing company contends with claims from former employees of discrimination and pay inequities.
Ms. Wishom worked for more than two decades at Harpo Studios, founded by media mogul Oprah Winfrey, before joining Skywalker Holdings LLC, where she is now president.
Pinterest Chief Executive and co-founder Ben Silbermann said in a Monday statement that the company had been talking to candidates over the past few months. He praised Ms. Wishom’s experience creating content and being a “passionate advocate for building a company culture of respect, integrity, inclusion and support—areas in which we must innovate and improve.” Mr. Silbermann added that Ms. Wishom “has spent her career outside of Silicon Valley and has a vision for reimagining the board/employee relationship.”
Ms. Wishom, in the same statement, said she was interested in Pinterest’s expansion into content and media and in Mr. Silbermann’s “vision of having a new type of conversation between employees and the board itself.”
“There are real challenges to address, and that responsibility is not lost on me,” she said. “I’m committed to listening and sharing my perspective and providing guidance as Pinterest continues to make positive strides forward.”
Ms. Wishom joins a Pinterest board with two other female directors and six male directors. She is the board’s only Black director.
Francoise Brougher, Pinterest's former chief operating officer, last week accused the company of having a hostile work environment for women, saying in a blog post on Medium that “female executives, even at the highest levels, are marginalized, excluded, and silenced.”
Ms. Brougher, who said she was fired in April, also filed a lawsuit against the company claiming wrongful termination and retaliation. The suit alleged a culture of secretiveness among top executives that resulted in Ms. Brougher being left out of key meetings and decision-making.
A spokesman for Pinterest said the company was reviewing the complaint.
Two other former female employees, Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, in recent months publicly criticized the company for gender bias and racial discrimination. Both women, who are Black, said they were paid less than male counterparts and were retaliated against for speaking up about the matter.
Ms. Ozoma said in an interview Monday that adding a Black woman to the board is a positive, but not a resolution because it doesn’t address the issues she and Ms. Shimizu Banks raised.
“They need to pay us what we’re owed and they need to remove the people who discriminated and retaliated against us,” said Ms. Ozoma.
In a statement a Pinterest spokesman said, “We never want anyone to feel the way Ifeoma and Aerica did while they were working at Pinterest. We’re committed to immediately taking the actions that we’ve outlined to our employees, and we’re actively pursuing this work.”
On Friday a few hundred employees posted messages in Slack channels in support of claims made by former colleagues and to push for improvements at the company. The group asked for supporters to use the hashtag #changeatpinterest and sign a petition calling for an end to discrimination and retaliation at Pinterest.
A Pinterest representative said that the company shares with its employees a goal of “building and fostering a company we can all be proud of.”
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